


Photographs

by bythehighwayside



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Ideation, and Jessica's death is mentioned, but Sam doesn't know that, there isn't technically major character death in this one, via 11x23
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:47:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27902467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bythehighwayside/pseuds/bythehighwayside
Summary: At some point after they move in together, Jess starts asking Sam more about his family, wants to know if he has any pictures of them other than framed photo of John and Mary that sits on his dresser. He shows her the few pictures he has of Dad, and the ones he has of him and Dean. There’s only three pictures he doesn’t show her.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: Tumblr Drabbles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043190
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	Photographs

At some point after they move in together, Jess starts asking Sam more about his family, wants to know if he has any pictures of them other than framed photo of John and Mary that sits on his dresser. He shows her the few pictures he has of Dad, and the ones he has of him and Dean. There’s only three pictures he doesn’t show her.

The first picture he doesn’t show her was taken when Sam was eleven. Dean’s got his arm thrown around Sam and they both have shotguns propped on their shoulders. It would be easy enough to explain away - he’s told her before that his dad was into “hunting” and had taken them along as kids. There isn’t a real reason not to show her. Sure, the picture makes him and Dean look like some kind of hicks, holding guns before they were even old enough to drive (although at 15 Dean had already been driving for years), but it wasn’t that. He knows Jessica doesn’t care about that. It’s something about their faces, in the picture. Sam is smiling in it, beaming almost, tucked in crooked against Dean’s side, and Dean, well. Dean isn’t smiling, really. He’s trying to keep his face serious - thought it made him look tough, probably - but one corner of his mouth is tugging upwards a little, like he couldn’t help himself. For some reason, Sam can’t let her see their faces in that picture.

The second picture is of the two of them sleeping. Dad had come home one night after being gone near two weeks on a hunt. The TV was on, playing infomercials, and Sam and Dean had fallen asleep on top of the covers. They were asleep on the same bed and plastered to each other, front to front, Dean’s thigh shoved up awfully close to Sam’s crotch, Sam drooling into Dean’s hair. They were 17 and 21, and Dad thought it was hilarious. He laughed himself silly showing them the picture later, watching them both blush. Dean wasn’t the first Winchester with an eye for blackmail material.

They didn’t tell Dad that it was normal for them to sleep that way. They didn’t explain that they shared a bed even when he was gone, because it’s what they were used to. Sometimes they got cold in their own beds, or had nightmares, or couldn’t sleep without whispering in each other’s ears, against the pillows. It wasn’t a big deal or anything, but somehow they both knew Dad wouldn’t understand. Sam wouldn’t have to tell Jess any of that. He could show her the picture, tell her the same story Dad knew. He would never have to admit he shared a bed with his brother until he moved out when he was 18. The picture could be nothing but an embarrassing memory that’s funnier in hindsight. He doesn’t show it to her.

The third picture, well. No one could blame Sam for keeping that to himself. In fact, Dean would kill Sam if he ever showed it to anyone. If he ever had reason to find out, that is.

Dean never did have many friends, even when he was in school. His mileage varied from town to another; some places people thought they were both freaks, some places people thought he was a little weird, but cool enough to hang out with. And plenty of girls like him, of course.

One year they were living just outside Salt Lake City around Halloween, and Carla Johnson invited Dean to come downtown with her and her friends to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Dean always was a fan of cult classics, so he’d seen it, but never in the theater before. She told him they were all dressing up, and that since it was first time, he should get to be the main character. Dean wasn’t too keen on wearing heels, but there was very little he wouldn’t do for a pretty girl.

So Dean dressed up for the show and Sam laughed his ass off at him, standing there in what amounted to lingerie, and Dean had laughed a little too and said, “Hey, if this is what she’s into.” Carla Johnson wasn’t one of those uptight, religious girls either, so for all either of them knew, she was.

She wasn’t. Dean came home not even half an hour later, ankles twisting clumsily in his heels.

“It was a joke,” Dean said when Sam asked, shrugged. “Her and her friends thought it’d be funny if I actually did it, they didn’t really wanna go or anything.”

Sam said, “Not a very funny joke,” and Dean shrugged again.

“Guess it was on their end, they took enough pictures to remember it by.”

Dean was going into the bathroom to get out of the costume, but Sam said, “Hold on a sec.”

Dad was always keeping disposable cameras around for whatever case he was on, sometimes he needed to photograph things to look them up later. They weren’t hard to find, and Sam dug one out of a bag Dad had left behind with them.

Dean looked about ready to pop Sam in the nose, but Sam said, “Come on, there’s plenty of bad pictures of tonight, let’s get one good one.”

So the third picture is of Dean standing in the bathroom doorway of that month’s motel in a sparkly halter top, cheap high heels, thigh-high fishnet stockings, and black lace panties. The costume wasn’t perfect, and Dean had drawn the line at makeup (Carla might have been the prettiest girl in town, but she wasn’t the only girl), but Sam had gotten him to pose for it, said, “Come on, Dean, this is supposed to be a good picture, you gotta do it right.” So Dean isn’t just standing in the doorway in the picture, he’s leaning with one leg up on the frame, flushed and embarrassed but looking up at the camera - at Sam - from under his long eyelashes, trying to keep his pout from turning into a smile.

With that picture, the photo itself could be explained. Jess has seen the movie, dressed up a couple years in a row to see it herself, so that part would be easy. But then Sam might have to explain why he’s kept this picture, of his brother in panties and stockings in their motel bathroom, and he doesn’t think he could bring himself to laugh about it. He doesn’t keep it because it’s funny.

(He doesn’t keep it because he thinks it’s sexy, either, even though he does. He keeps it because the Dean in that picture is a Dean no one else has ever seen. Yeah, a lot of people saw him in that costume that night, but they didn’t get to see him like _that_. Dean would do a lot of things for a pretty girl, but there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for Sam. Sam took the picture for Dean, but Dean agreed to it because Sam wanted him to, and that wasn’t something Sam could explain if he tried. Especially not then, when his brother’s absence still hurts so bad in Sam’s chest that he tries not to think about it, about how he missed him like a limb. Jessica’s awfully understanding about a lot of things, but Sam couldn’t ask her to understand all that.)

What Sam doesn’t know is that Jess finds those three pictures while Sam is gone. She wouldn’t normally go through Sam’s things - Sam holds his privacy very dear to him, especially about his family, and she’d never want to violate that. But there’s something weird about this whole thing, Sam’s brother breaking in, and them leaving in the middle of the night. It seems like there’s something Sam’s not telling her, something about it is wrong.

So she goes looking for something that’ll clear this up, not even sure what she thinks she’ll find.

In the back corner of Sam’s sock drawer she finds those pictures, the three of them, hidden far away from all the others. She looks at those pictures for a long time, of Sam and his brother with the guns, sharing the bed, of Dean dressed half in drag. She looks at their faces, in all of the pictures, and she tries to make a story out of them, about why Sam chose to keep these ones a secret. She tries to find a good story, one she wants to hear, but something about them seems wrong in the way that everything about Sam’s family does, like she’s missing a few pieces of the picture. They don’t make her feel any better.

Those three pictures burn in the fire, and Sam wasn’t exactly thinking about saving them anyway. He doesn’t know that Jess had left them out on the dresser, willing to admit she’d been snooping if it would get Sam to talk to her about them, about what was really going on.

Over the years they collect other pictures. Dad had a handful, and so does Dean, and there’s the ones Jenny gives them from their old house. Bobby kept taking pictures, even after they were grown up, probably since he knew best that any time he saw them might be the last.

Dean keeps his pictures out, in his room. On his bedside table, or his dresser; lying around somewhere he can get to them easily when he wants to.

Sam keeps his in a box under his bed, along with the few other things he’s allowed himself to keep over the years: a green army man, his first pocket knife, the fake amulet. And in a box underneath the fake amulet, the real one. None of Sam’s pictures are a secret from Dean, only this, only until Sam’s sure enough that Dean will want it back.

Of course, in the end, that choice isn’t left up to Sam. Although maybe that’s for the best - it might have taken Sam years to get up the courage, to be sure enough to do it himself. And they have a lot to think about once they get home, with God living in the bunker, and Lucifer, _Lucifer_. Dean tries to keep Sam away from him as much as possible, and even though Sam always insists, “It’s okay, I know we have to,” he’s grateful for that. 

They don’t get much time to themselves, in the hours following, is the point, and Sam had seen Dean’s face when he pulled the amulet out of Sam’s pocket, and he knows his own face had given him away, but for the first time he’s pretty sure that isn’t a bad thing. They never do get to talk about it.

In the cemetery Dean pulls him close and slips the amulet into his pocket. Sam mumbles, “I love you,” into Dean’s shoulder, soft enough that Dean can ignore it if he wants, but Dean presses his face against Sam’s neck and whispers, “God, do I love you.”

Afterward Sam goes home. There isn’t much else he can do. He’s making his way through the bunker with his hand on the amulet in his pocket, trying to decide between heading for his gun or for Dean’s bed, where he can breathe in what’s left of his brother’s smell while he still can. He still hasn’t decided when he hears the telltale click of a hammer being cocked, and just like that another choice is made for him.


End file.
